Birthright
As we celebrate Juneteenth for the second year as a national federal holiday — now on Sunday AND Monday—amidst the block parties, barbecues, festivals, concerts, and civic events, I continue to ponder the meaning and implications of this day. My ambivalence about commemorating the occasion of the constitutional right to freedom for African-Americans being reluctantly accepted by the last holdouts is balanced by what I imagine were the jubilant hopes and dreams embodied by those first celebrations, as our people claimed their birthright as free human beings at long last.
Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900 held in "East Woods" on East 24th Street in Austin. Credit: Austin History Center.
I imagine that same sense of possibility animating the founding of historic Black towns established in the aftermath of the Civil War — places like Nicodemus, Kansas; Boley, Oklahoma; Mound Bayou, Mississippi; Allensworth, California; and Seneca, New York — as well as the early 20th-century Black communities of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma (commonly known as Black Wall Street), and Rosewood, Florida. That these very real places where Black Americans thrived in the most normal of ways: owning land, operating stores and businesses, going about their daily lives without interference, seems almost fictional to me. And yet the fact that this normalcy and self-sufficiency posed such a threat to the surrounding white communities as to precipitate their destruction is all too easy to believe.
The idea of claiming spaces for Blackness to thrive continues to captivate me, as does a vision of Black society that is steeped in our history, embraces our advancement, and protects both. This idea was the inspiration behind the Soul Restoration Project Albina Arts Salon (now living on as The Soul Restoration Center), an artistic residency that transformed a vacant storefront into a vital hub of cultural activity in Portland's Albina neighborhood.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been engaging in conversations with a number of Black artists around the question: What is The New Black? By which I mean: what is their vision of Blackness that transcends the predominant historical narrative of oppression and struggle? Their answers are as diverse as the kaleidoscope of Black experience. Pianist/composer Jason Moran responded that “the New Black is a rainbow that contains all colors.” Vocalist Esperanza Spalding finds The New Black in the vision of the youth, saying that “following and empowering them will give us everything we need to know.” Filmmaker Kalimah Abioto expresses The New Black as an inseparable bond of past and future. For me it is having the space to exercise our full humanity and express our culture without fear or reservation, to relish our brilliance, celebrate our narratives, own our destiny, and define its terms.
This Juneteenth, I challenge us to go beyond acknowledging the historic inequities of the past and ask a bolder question: what does the country look like that loves Black people? For me, it would be a place where whole swaths of “Black Wall Streets”—vibrant, safe, sustainable communities bursting with proud, thriving, swelling Blackness — are seen as a boon, rather than a threat. Where a future void of the structures that have oppressed Black communities as far back as the Middle Passage is not a fiction, but fact.
I wrote the following text as part of my 2021 Come Sunday Soundwalk which took me through a beautiful block of homes in Portland’s historic Albina neighborhood, once the heart of the city's Black community.
Welcome to my neighborhood. Do you feel the groundedness and potential, the possibility of good things?
I recognize that this is a neighborhood, not a political project, not a staging ground. They’re just homes, places where people live. AND YET aren't they also like garments? Sharing glimpses of what we care about, WHAT WE BELIEVE, WHAT WE ASPIRE TO, WHAT WE STAND FOR?
This is not the political arena, it is a quiet street of houses with gardens, pillows, and porch swings. Empty, they are just frames. The life inside them is invisible from the street. The people getting up, having meals, preparing for work; the children safe, secure, thriving.
Look again at this, my Black neighborhood. Every house, every garden, every stoop, every spacious well-loved lawn, imagine the black lives that fill each and every home on this block of beautiful homes. The warm meals being served, the children being raised, the homework being done, the retirement portfolios being reviewed, the vacations being planned, the college decisions being considered, the charitable giving being contemplated.
Imagine no redlining, no housing discrimination, no restrictive covenents. Imagine each of these homes the proud dwelling of a Black family who was not denied a bank loan.
Imagine the generations of doctors, engineers, corporate founders, artists, nurses, teachers, civil servants, community leaders, lawyers, inventors, entrepreneurs and business owners inhabiting these lovingly landscaped and beautifully renovated spaces. Every family, a Black family, every face a Black face going to bed, getting up, doing their jobs, raising their children, working, dreaming, relaxing, camping, biking, skiing, grilling, investing, living, loving. All of us safe, secure and thriving, here in my neighborhood.
Happy Juneteenth!
To read further about historic Black Towns Here are a couple of informative links from encycolopedia.com and theroot.com.